


Pick a Place and Read

by ChaoticWeevil



Series: They're Lesbians, Harold [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Catholic Bucky Barnes, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Genderswap, Like nearly a CENTURY of useless lesbianism, More lesbians!, Mutual Pining, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Relationship Discussions, Useless Lesbians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticWeevil/pseuds/ChaoticWeevil
Summary: “I’m hurt, honestly. You saw me dressin’ up in drag and faking that I was your fella to keep the guys away from you and you thought I was some good Catholic girl who’d marry young and marry straight?”“What?”“’Things always end like this,’ my ass. Look at me.”Steph did, eyes wide, feeling more like a scolded child then someone able to offer up more of a response then another, “What?”Bucky has a difficult morning, Steph has a difficult evening.





	Pick a Place and Read

**Author's Note:**

> Ezra Bell stop being a good singer challenge. Probably gonna end up writing short stories about each song in his Don't All Look Up At Once EP, lmao-- I'd highly recommend listening to Pick a Place and Read while you read this, of course! Dunno how to link to songs in AO3 but: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc3XSw2rY2M

Steph was learning how to avoid micromanaging life as a whole, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one hell of a learning curve. And if the way Bucky snarled at door-to-door salesmen and shoved duffle bags of guns and knives in every corner of the townhouse was any sign, any control Steph let go of was more than made up for. It was reassuring. It was worrying as all get out.

Steph was clinging it all, though, like it could be some _sign_ that Bucky wanted their life to stay stable. Chances were, it was a sign that Bucky still didn’t feel safe with her. But that couldn’t be blamed, not one bit.

It was Sundays that were the hardest—Something in Bucky seemed to stir, like the anxiety of church was rearing it’s ugly head through years of habitual attended services tugging and pulling at her.

Sometimes she stayed put on one corner of the couch, eyes stubbornly fixed on whatever sitcom Steph put on. Sometimes she was flighty, though. Couldn’t make herself stay put through the morning, like today.

Bucky tucked one knife in each of her boots, affixed another to her belt, reached for a pistol—And stopped. She swung her head up to look at Steph, hair still stuck to her forehead from shower water.

“What do you think?”

Steph blinked, letting her hands fall away from her shoelaces to try and puzzle out what answer Bucky wanted. Her index finger was tapping the sleek edge of the pistol, the question’s subtext was clear. Bucky rarely considered Steph’s viewpoint on whether a situation needed more weapons or less. Which was fair. Only one of them was jacked up on enough _well-made_ serum to inspire a nation.

“Depends on where you were planning on taking us, don’t you think?” Steph turned back to her sneakers, fiddling with the laces more to look a little busy, to give Bucky time to consider where they were actually going to go.

“Museum, then food. At that coffee shop with the cheesecake you like, maybe. So, should I…” Another terse gesture to the gun. Steph made her shrug as loose and unjudgmental as she could.

“Take it or leave it. Which museum?” She got up to grab her keys, her wallet—Bucky’d already stashed her own in some interior pocket of her jacket, no doubt.

Bucky tucked the pistol back into the bag, double checking that the safety was off. The knives would be enough for today, it seemed. “You know which museum. I heard they added more artifacts from our lives and all that. I want to… See my progress.” She admitted it like it was an embarrassing little secret. Like Steph was somehow inconvenienced by watching the way Bucky’s whole expression lit up when she recognized how much Steph hated those damn chorus girl stockings, or how scratchy the sheets in their old apartment got in the summer.

And thankfully, the would be gun left behind. Steph offered up her hand like an olive branch, and miraculously, despite decades and brainwashing and it being a damn Sunday, Bucky took it. And intertwined their fingers, carefully, as Steph locked the door behind them and led them out into the sunshine.

 

It wasn’t until they got home that Bucky fulfilled the last ritual of Sunday: she tracked down where she’d hidden her old diary away.

The book _used_ to be beautiful, this soft blue cover with white detailing, but it had gone sun-bleached and stained over the years. Bucky taped reports in it, from HYDRA agents, from S.H.I.E.L.D. therapists, she cobbled together her life page by page.

And slowly, Bucky had started to read aloud the parts she remembered. Months ago, Steph thought it wasn’t for her, she’d politely excused herself to get a cup of tea, or tried to bury her nose in her own book and focus on a fictional tragedy rather than a real one. The guilt of it all weighed down on her, pressed her down—She _still_ had to fight to offer up a reason to let Bucky remember in peace.

This time, Bucky cut off the excuses at the source. Just carefully squeezed their still-clasped hands and made a beeline for the bedroom before Steph could so much as toe off her shoes. Bucky only paused to grab her diary and set each one of her knives on her person on the bedside table before she hooked her metal arm around Steph’s waist and pulled the both of them to the bed.

“I can’t read aloud tonight,” she confessed, like she wasn’t wrapping Steph up in her arms tight enough that Steph could barely think about speaking aloud for anything other than asking for a kiss or two. Or six. Steph pulled off her shoes and pulled back from Bucky’s arm just enough to sit cross-legged on the comforter, nodding her consent.

“We can just look.”

“No, I—” Bucky scrunched her free hand up in her hair, wrinkling her nose. Steph was so damn glad that habit stayed. The frustrated expression of a “I want _you_ to tell me things. All I could write about back then was you. No matter the topic, it circled ‘round, aimed right for you all over again.” She thumbed through the yellowing pages like she was just trying to avoid eye contact, and maybe she was. Her finger kept landing on Steph’s name. Over and over again.

Steph had heard most of this book, the descriptions, the prayers that Steph _wouldn’t_ learn the contents of the diary—But she’d never looked at a single word that Bucky didn’t offer up first. She’d accepted Bucky’s halting self-editing as she read, side-stepping phrases she couldn’t remember or couldn’t address at the moment or possibly both. And that was alright with Steph. She could be content. She was _awful_ good at being content.

“The _point_ is,” Bucky said, “I never learn what you thought about me. Awful nice to see my handwriting explaining everything out to me, but handwriting can be forged. Someone could’ve forced me to write things.”

“And no one could force me to say things?”

“Not when it comes to me,” Bucky said, and the confidence in her voice was enough to make Steph set a hand on the comforter and twist, picking at the strands. It felt like Bucky was hurling herself off a building with the hurried hope that Steph would be there to catch her. And Steph would. Every damn time, she would. “Tell me, Steph. 1932. You and I met. What did you think?”

“Thought you were a guardian angel. My head hit that brick wall so hard that everything felt too bright, and I blink the stars out of my eyes and look up and there you were. Looking concerned as hell. Kinda set the stage for us, huh?”

Bucky’s smile was a fragile type of hopeful as she nodded, once, firm. “I tried to… I tried to get you ice? From the man who owned the grocer’s, Mister—Something. His name was--” Bucky’s hand in her hair went into a tight fist again, so Steph leaned just close enough to smooth her fingers over the knuckles, easing the tension away again, just a little.

“Buck, _I_ don’t remember his name. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

“Mr. Fletcher.”

Steph blinked. “Well, there you go. Uh, you said somethin’ about me looking nice, I thought you were trying to be a smartass, but you walked me home anyway. Much appreciated, by the way. I know how pissed I used to get whenever I lost a fight.”

“You mean every last time you tried to fight? Yeah. Yeah, I can remember _that._ ” Bucky wasn’t quite laughing, but her smile stayed, and that was more than good enough for Steph. The grin froze over the second Bucky closed the diary, though. Steph, in return, quelled her own nearly-laugh. “I want to know something.”

“Anything.”

“When I went off to war, when I got captured, fell from the train, ran away from you when I was with HYDRA, left you alone the second I pulled you out of the river—” The words hit Steph too hard for her to do much more then blink, but Bucky pressed on. “I kept leaving you. I couldn’t ever write about it, not really, so how did you…”

“Deal with it?” Steph snapped, harsher than she’d expected. “Cope? Handle it? _Badly_. Got drunk when I could and tried to anyway after the serum. Look, I don’t want to discuss this, I--”

Bucky shook her head, letting her hands fall to grasp for Steph’s, refusing to actually take her hands but asking, pleading. “I meant how did you keep wanting me to _come back_?”

Steph first took Bucky’s hands in hers. Then took a breath, forcing her voice to steady out again. “The thing is, you didn’t _leave_ me. Not really. I was furious when you went off to war, sure. _God,_ I wanted to drag you back by your lapels and make you take me with you. But I was sick. We needed money. The both of us _knew_ we damn well had to fight, it was in our blood, wasn’t your fault that I couldn’t pitch my voice low and get well enough to follow you. Can’t blame yourself from getting captured any of those times. Can’t blame yourself for falling. And brainwashing doesn’t exactly leave much room for meaningful reunions.”

“But I still left.” Bucky had set her jaw, a movement that was just short of a pout and ten times as stubborn. Steph couldn’t help the soft, wounded noise she made in return. “What, were you just expecting it after a while?”

“Think I had enough of those off-brand romance paperbacks from our day to know, Buck. When someone—When a girl like me likes a girl like you this much, there’s only three ways it can end. Death, institutionalization, or being forced apart. Things always end like this, Jane.”

“A girl like me,” Bucky echoed, hands so frozen against Steph’s that Steph herself let go first, tucking her hands behind her back like she’d stolen something. She sure felt like she had.

“Sorry,” she gasped, stumbling out of bed. “ _Sorry,_ I need to— Gonna go get dinner?” She fled the bedroom before she could think, pulling on rainboots rather than risk going back into the bedroom. She was trying to hunt down her keys, searching near-frantically, suddenly and fully understanding why Bucky liked to excuse herself to run wild in New York for a few hours every now and then. She didn’t have a coherent thought until Bucky’s fluffy socked foot tapped her side as she lay face-down on the kitchen floor, searching under the fridge. Steph slowly pressed her hands over the back of her head like she was sheltering herself from a bomb.

“We’re a house full of runaways,” Bucky decided. “I think you just told me that you’re sweet on girls? I think you just tried to claim old shitty lesbian novels proved that we’re both gonna end up in an insane asylum? ‘Cause, uh, I kind of thought you read enough modern literature to know death, going mental, and separation aren’t the only options, Steph.”

Steph rolled over onto her back, galoshes squeaking against the tile floor. Not even bothering to shelter herself anymore. She’d gone God knows how long keeping her unfortunately fond tendencies under wraps, and she went and blurted them out the second Bucky said a few touchy phrases. Bucky, on the other hand, looked delighted.

“God, we’re dumb! Steph, doll, we’re the biggest damn dunces on the _planet!_ ” Bucky laughed, Bucky framed her own face in her hands like she was shocked or about to hide away in mortification or both, Bucky looked like she was one wrong look away from starting to cry, but still, she teased. “I’m hurt, honestly. You saw me dressin’ up in drag and faking that I was your fella to keep the guys away from you and you thought I was some good Catholic girl who’d marry young and marry straight?”

“What?”

“’Things always end like this,’ my _ass._ Look at me.”

Steph did, eyes wide, feeling more like a scolded child then someone able to offer up more of a response then another, “ _What?_ ”

“Steph, it all clicked just then, lemme tell you what we’ve been missing. You think I like dating around, huh? Throwing myself at whatever fella I see?”

Now it was Steph’s turn to set her jaw, sitting up and lifting herself up onto her knees to argue that Bucky shouldn’t care about how many guys she dates, to ask who the hell told Bucky that dancing with the occasional fella was a bad thing.

Bucky just sat down right beside her on the kitchen floor and grabbed her by the waist, looking too jubilant to allow Steph to speak harshly. Besides, she wasn’t done explaining. “Steph, baby, I dated those guys so no one would talk bad about the two of us. And you went and thought I could never like girls, didn’t you?”

“Well, I— _Yes,_ but you’re too—”

Bucky, the personification of infuriating, _shushed her._ “Stop it. I’m on a roll here. You know how rare it is that I _understand_ shit like this? I told you to look at me, none of that peering around in your own head to figure out the answer, I’m right here and I’ll tell you. I like girls. I like _you._ And I never wanted to go and fuck things up by assuming you might just like me. Do you understand?”

Steph nodded, dumbstruck. She was still stuck on those lines, though. ‘I like girls. I like _you.’_ Echoing and turning over and over again in Steph’s mind as she struggled to comprehend it all. This was decades of bitter thoughts being written over in six words. She needed to curl up in some quiet room and scribble over her sketchbook until she could _actually_ understand.

“You seem a lot more, uh… Articulate. Compared to this morning,” was all she could manage. Bucky grinned up at her until Steph couldn’t help but smile back, shuffling a little closer on her knees so she could study every last hint of expression on Bucky’s face. It was an old habit, from back when Steph’s eyesight was going but glasses were too much of an extraneous cost to afford. Now, Bucky just kept her arms looped around Steph and didn’t bother to guard her expression, and that was enough for Steph to let go of the tension in the pit of her stomach, it was enough. “So you like girls.”

“One girl in particular.”

“ _Damn_ it, stop being cheesy!” Steph accused with a nervous laugh, tipping her head forward just enough to brush foreheads with Bucky for one split second, until her hair spilled into both their faces and she pulled back to brush it away. “I’m trying to get the facts all together. You like girls, you like _me._ And you’re not saying that in a friendly way.”

“No, ma’am. And I hate to be pushy, but I’ve been dealing with this shit for _decades,_ you mind telling me how you’re feeling about this whole mess? About _me?_ I’d appreciate some feedback on whether to, uh—Stop hanging off of you.” She dropped her arms away, pressing her hands to the tile instead, but Steph made up the difference. Draped her arms around Bucky’s shoulders and pressed a careful, careful kiss to Bucky’s forehead.

“That answer your question?”

“Steph, you goddamn—We’ve been kissing each other on the cheek since we were kids, that ain’t no _answer._ I want words. Please.”

Steph, because she was insufferable and petty and all things atrocious, shushed Bucky in return with a stupid smile on her face. “What, my panic over the plots of vintage lesbian romances wasn’t enough to tip you off? I like you. It’s gonna take me a while, though. To really wrap my head around this and all, I’m gonna need some time.”

“We got nothin’ but time, Steph. Read over the rest of my diary, why don’t you? Without me there to self-edit. Might be a few phrases in there to help the both of us out. Might’ve been pulled away from you too many times to count, yeah. But I always come back. Take your ‘things always end like this’ and transfer it over, punk.”

“Gimme a second to settle from the whiplash, god. Just this morning I was convincing you not to bring a pistol to a history museum.”

“Sunday morning’s for fleeing church. Sunday night’s for diary entries and some bona fide realizations,” Bucky said, laying back on the floor. “If you’re too shell-shocked to go somewhere comfortable, don’t blame me when we get dust bunnies in our hair.”

Steph didn’t. She could let go of that bit of control, she could work with the learning curve of rewriting her past with the realization of Bucky’s fondness.

It was reassuring. It was enough to make her thump down onto the tile next to Bucky and blink up at the ceiling and slowly, slowly accept that Sundays might just be nice.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [These Things Always End Like This](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17013033) by [WeShallSee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WeShallSee/pseuds/WeShallSee)




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